The creativity of Galician composers-priests in the last decades after Ukraine
gained Independence is attracting more and more attention. This is not least due to
the fact that the founder of the "Przemyśl School", the first in the galaxy of
composer-priests Mykhailo Verbytskyi, is the author of the national anthem. The
songs and choruses of some other artists from this circle are very popular in the
repertoire of modern professional and amateur groups - "Small flower", "Wings,
wings" and especially "Native land" by Viktor Matiuk, "Oh, don't forget", carols
"God is gives birth" and "There is news in Bethlehem now" by Ostap Nyzhankivskyi,
"Above the Prut in the meadow", "Where the Yatran winds steeply", "Let's play, old
gypsy" by Isydor Vorobkevych, "Howl between us", "Christ is risen!" by Yosyp
Kyshakevych and a number of others. The fact that they were also the authors of
musical and scenic artifacts, the genre of which was defined in different ways:
singing-playing, operetta, vaudeville, etc., is known and even analyzed in a
theoretical aspect. However, unfortunately, during the years of Independence, despite
the fact that there was an official "full rehabilitation" of composers and writers,
authors of singing-playing banned by the Soviet ideology, they are only now
gradually returning to the musical circulation, and then mostly in concert
performance, and not on stage opera or drama theaters, where they should actually
take their proper place.
Therefore, attention to musical and theatrical creativity in the Western
Ukrainian cultural environment is caused by their unique role in national history.
After all, domestic scientists have not for nothing identified musicality as one of the
most characteristic features of the Ukrainian nation. As an example of the special role
of music in society, we can cite the slogan of the choir circles of the "Enlightenment"
society in the second half of the 19th - the first half of the 20th centuries: "I sing to
my heart, and my heart to God and the Motherland."
However, some aspects of consideration of the theatrical heritage of Galician
composers-priests, and to an even greater extent - the Orthodox priest Isydor
Vorobkevych from Bukovyna, remain unexplained, in particular, often a very critical
assessment of the "obsolescence" of their musical and stage artifacts, their noncompliance with the spirit of the times is caused by the failure to take into account
important factors, among whom, first of all, we will highlight the specifics of their
worldview, as persons of spiritual rank and artists, whose main goal was
enlightenment and raising the cultural level of the democratic public. The focus of the
research is the study of the phenomenon of Galician-Bukovyna singing-playing,
taking into accounts the pan-European trends of democratization of musical theater
and the strengthening of its ethical and didactic role, especially during the Age of
Enlightenment, when different genre versions of democratic theater were opposed to
opera. In this sense, the domestic comic play with music and singing, which received
a different terminological definition in different cultures, was one of the leading
genres. On the other hand, the leading influence of the national tradition is
emphasized, which in this case combines the spiritual and religious origins of the
moralizing nature of the stage artifacts of M. Verbytskyi, P. Bazhanskyi, V. Matiuk,
and I. Vorobkevych.
Therefore, it seemed important to find out the objective historical prerequisites
that formed in the centuries-old tradition of both the European Enlightenment and
national musical and stage art, and became the basis for the formation of the Galician
and Bukovyna singing-playing, determined its social involvement, as well as the
disclosure of the main artistic priorities of the composers-priests, the main spiritual
and aesthetic goals, for the sake of which they turned to the genre of singing-playing
and hence the justification of their choice of a certain set of musical and expressive
means. Based on the questions posed and the need to solve them in the context of
modern tasks of Ukrainian musical culture in the era of confrontation with Russian
aggression and the affirmation of national spiritual values, the main goal and tasks of
the presented work are formed.
